Chopping & Chess.

Chopping & Chess by Simon Lucas
“Put your back into it son!”
Whenever we were out woodcutting, his words often stung. I tried so hard to make him proud. Though often muffled by his thick beard that engulfed his skin like dense black smog, he was a man of few words and I clung onto them. His short scruffy hair perfectly matched his hairy demeanour. I remember that once he turned up at mum’s house completely clean shaven. When I opened the door I called out to mum telling her there was a stranger at the door. That’s how accustomed we were to his hirsute face. He was cunning and an intelligent man only dressed in flannies, hard yhaka trousers and steel capped boots. As the tradition usually goes that those from the bush usually stay in the bush, so he had settled for a life of digging holes for fence posts and manning a fearsome tractor rather than a university education.

Out in paradise past Sheffield, every strike of the timber echoed throughout the hills.
“Half way through your strike, let the axe slip through your fingers,” he’d advise and he’d mark the wood with a spray can, where I would strike, and then hit the same spot again so as to get my aim in good practice. To me at the time it was paradise, just him and I.

Arriving home just by nightfall, unloading the Ute, then heading inside for some’ swamp surprise’ a favourite meal that he’d concoct. This was always followed by chess, the general’s game.
It was a very old set but beautiful. It was a Greek style set with hoplites and foot soldiers rather than pawns and bishops. On one of the vertical sides of the set there was the signature of the master craftsman who made it a couple hundred years ago.

He taught me how to play, how I should think three steps ahead at all times but I always played very differently to him, with a childlike view and unorthodox strategies.
Sometimes we would play a few games a night but I only ever won a few times.
One night he said to me “If you were a chess piece, which one would you be?”
Perplexed by what was said I stopped and thought about it for a while, really contemplating even though I wasn’t very old. After a few more moves I told my father that I thought I’d be a pawn because I’m only small and insignificant.
The game kept progressing on in eerie silence, only hearing the tapping of fidgeting fingers on the table and the clunk of the marble chess pieces. A cough and then a sentence came from his lips, “That’s a pretty negative view son, and somehow quite correct.” The words piercing through me like a cold knife, that he thought so little of me, as if I was a half monthly burden.

Months passed with more woodcutting, farm work and chess on every other weekend.
It made me happy when we were out wood cutting and I could hit the same spot and turn a tree to kindling in no time at all, but the man’s stubbornness wouldn’t let me see any sign of approval or acknowledgement, no matter how much I would sweat it out in the late summer sun.
Six months after his question was posed initially he asked it again, “Which piece you would be?” My reply was the same. “I’m just a pawn.” Silence ensued.
I felt upset, but felt the need to ask the same question of him. “Which piece would you be father? Surely you would be the king?” The reply was shocking as I felt sure that he thought so highly of himself. “No son, I’m not deserving of that status.”

“Am I still a pawn?” I asked tentatively. No reply was forthcoming. We continued our chess game in silence. I poked and prodded at his cover, check here, then retreat, stretching out his defence.

“Beer O’clock,” he announced and then journeyed to the fridge for some cheap VB.

Sitting back down with stubby in hand the game continued. I was nervous as to why he had not answered my question. Then after clearing his throat with a look on his face as if trying to swallow a golf ball, he muttered, “Son you may only be a pawn now but one day, one day son, you’ll be a knight.” I sat there shocked in the deepness of what he had said, filled with a bright feeling of joy and upliftment. I grinned with content.

The game had come to a finish and it was a stalemate. I had him on the ropes earlier but being older and wiser he had forced the draw.
That night I lay awake in the cold thinking, pondering the epic night that had come to pass.
The man that said so few words and even fewer words that were of admiration had given his son hope for the future and a feeling of worth.

It’s a big thing for an underappreciated son to finally find this acknowledgement, to be validated as something of promise.

Now sitting down, retelling this story, I’m reminded of the wise man of few words. Now that I am dressed in academic robes, so foreign to his world I am reminded of him, that he thought something decent of me and that he knew I would eventually shine like a knight.